How many times do we actually ask you to do anything on this blog? Our tone is usually more of an invitation to enjoy the pleasures of Portland or a suggestion of someone you might be interested in meeting. We’re not really about action items—but here’s one!

At this month’s Portland Greendrinks event, on the second Tuesday (January 10) at The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (561 Congress Street) Sean Sullivan from Bowdoin College will be filming for a video about career opportunities in Maine. He will be asking people their name, what they do in Portland and why they love living and working in Portland (and Maine). The footage will be used first for a video “to entice Bowdoin, Bates and Colby students to attend the Maine Based Employers Career Fair (prevent the brain drain!), which Bowdoin is putting on to feature opportunities available in Maine.” But since this also fits in rather neatly with the mission of Creative Portland, we will probably find uses for the footage of Portland-loving people too.

For extra incentives (and to highlight sustainable transportation in Portland), Sean has procured 3 free bike tune ups from Allspeed Cycles (that will be distributed at random to participants) and a discount code (for all participants) that waives the membership fee and gives $10 worth of free time from UCarShare ($35 value).

And for all you architects and interior designers out there, the event is co-sponsored by SMRT, the 125 year old Portland based architectural project management company.

So please, help Maine, help Portland and come to Greendrinks with a face and a soundbite to let the world know why you love Portland!

The First Friday Art Walk has entered a new phase in its life cycle as the flagship of Portland’s creative economy. Since July, designer Jennifer S. Muller has been producing a beautiful broadside map and program distributed the previous Thursday in The Portland Press Herald. The way the heavy, uncoated stock of the piece absorbs the ink makes it look more hand made than commercially printed, which is just the right touch for the Art Walk that aims to stoke local commerce through the propagation of fine art.

And building on the uproarious success of the What Cheer? Brigade at the SPACE Gallery Block Party, tonight’s festivities include New York’s Asphalt Orchestra for more street band fun. (Thank you, Portland Ovations) Programs? Marching Bands? And soon food carts? This is beginning to sound like a sporting event for creatives!

Some of tonights highlights include: a performance at 4:30 in Congress Square by The Milkman’s Union presented by the Portland Music Foundation to highlight this year’s Portland entries in the NYC’s CMJ Music Marathon; the opening reception of Good Design is Good Business: The Elements of Branding, the 2011 AIGA Maine Annual Exhibit at the Lewis Gallery, Portland Public Library, 5 Monument Square; an exhibit of photographs from the Portland Ballet’s “Who’s Your Dancer” project will be  on view at the KeyBank Monument Square branch; and the work of at least one Portland mayoral candidate is on view!

When Noah DeFilippis left Maine for San Francisco at the age of 17, he sought a sense of the urbane. In his return to Portland a few years ago, DeFilippis found that cosmopolitanism nestled improbably amongst Maine’s famous Pick-and-Paws and flea markets. DeFilippis and his wife, Amy Teh, started “Pinecone + Chickadee,” a business named for Maine’s state tree and bird in a tip-of-the-cap to Vacationland. Pinecone + Chickadee reflects a modern interpretation of old-school nostalgia, and DeFilippis and Teh have allied themselves with other local artisans to breathe life into events like Portland’s Picnic Music + Arts Festival.

Pinecone + Chickadee started when DeFilippis and Teh lived in Brooklyn and attended juried craft fairs like the Brooklyn Renegade Craft Fair, silkscreening cards and clothes with their unique, colorful prints. Upon moving to Portland after the birth of their first son, they noticed that vendor admission to regional craft fairs was granted on a first-come, first-serve basis. While punctuality may be a virtue, it doesn’t always correlate with creation. So DeFilippis and Teh, along with Ron Harrity of Peapod Recordings, Diane Toepfer of Ferdinand, and Sean Wilkinson, co-founder of Might & Main, set about creating the Picnic Music + Arts Festival.

Now in its fourth year, Picnic Music + Arts Festival brings over 120 local creators (with varying records of punctuality, but proven aesthetic juices) to Lincoln Park on Saturday, August 27^th from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m.. Attendees at the free event can peruse vendors’ jewelry, clothes, vintage materials, fine art, photography and more. Bryan Buchman, curator of music blog Hilly Town, culled music from bands with both local and NYC mettle, including Butcher Boy, Weird Children, Toughcats, Sunset Hearts, Bandana Splits, The Outfits, Mouth Washington, Clouder and the always-wonderful Mango Floss. Picnic will also serve up local foods to nosh on while shopping and listening to music.

DeFilippis says that the success of previous years has culminated in the biggest picnic yet. The small town aspect of the city also helps with the process. “Portland is an easy place to organize events,” he notes. “The councilors are pretty approachable, and you can just walk into City Hall to explain what you want.”

In addition to wrangling together Picnic, DeFilippis and Teh have busied themselves opening up Pinecone + Chickadee’s storefront on 6 Free Street. The store boasts the couple’s silkscreen design line as well as vintage finds and the work of local artists, like employee Kris Johnsen. When the two saw the potential storefront, Teh was nine-months pregnant with the couple’s second child. “It was the best and worst timing,” says DeFilippis. “You know what they always say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.” With a medley of their creations and others’, and a mind towards refurbishing old treasures in new contexts, DeFilippis and Teh of Pinecone + Chickadee upend notions of Maine while gleaning it for inspiration.

Above photo: Noah DeFilippis, co-owner/designer of Pinecone + Chickadee, poses with nesting dolls from the new storefront on 6 Free Street. DeFilippis and wife Amy Teh, his creative partner, have also been collaborating with other local movers and shakers to bring Picnic Music + Art Festival to Portland.

For some reason Portland is possessed of a number of hypertrophied creative communities relative to our population: architecture, culinary arts, literature, music and particularly advertising. I asked Dave Goldberg of Kemp Goldberg how big the agency scene is here. “Between ad agencies, PR firms and digital/interactive marketing firms in greater Portland, there are WAY more companies in this business than an area this size should or deserves to have,” says Dave. “I have 27 bookmarked, but there are more.” I asked him what he thought accounted for the disproportionate numbers and he answered with an anecdote, “I was down in West Hartford recently at my 30th high school reunion. I was talking to a woman I knew from school who does PR. From our discussion my guess is that in greater Hartford, an area larger than greater Portland, they have half as many agencies. Hartford does not have a “creative economy.” It doesn’t attract the creative talent, leadership, investment, etc. We in Portland are different.”

To celebrate that difference, the VIA agency is hosting this year’s Broderson Awards, The Ad Club of Maine‘s “Celebration of Commercial Artists from the State of Maine.” In a recent post on Forbes.com, I talked about Dunbar’s number and the size of cohesive social communities. In the hunter gatherer terms I was considering, our advertising community is one of our few creative enclaves larger than a clan and approaching a tribe. A clan, however, would fit the theme of this year’s competition which (mis)quotes the great (and greatly inebriated) Irish poet Dylan Thomas with the title ”In Our Craft or Sullen Art.” Why a sullen art? For Thomas, the poet’s craft was practiced while others slept so as to earn “the common wages /Of their most secret heart.” Sounds a lot like advertising!

In the words of VIA creative director, Teddy Stoecklein, ”To outsiders Maine, let alone Portland or Bangor, is usually just vacationland. Our Fine Art community is often overshadowed by bigger cities like Boston, New York, Providence, even Montreal. The same is true of our Commercial Art community, yet we have some of the most talented people in the nation, right here. The Broderson Awards is hosted by the Maine Ad Club to reward the very best in Maine. But it’s more than just a pat on the back or a trophy. It’s also an acknowledgment that our craft is indeed a Fine Art. It’s both a showcase and a moment of inspiration.” To make that acknowledgement stick, they have lined up some first rate judges: Nina DiSesa, Former Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of McCann Erickson, New York; Rupal Parekh, Agency Editor of Advertising Age; and Peter Friedman Former Executive Producer at Wieden + Kennedy and McCann Erickson, New York.

The deadline for all entries is next Friday, July 1, 2011 at 5 p.m. Late entries will not be accepted. See the Broderson site to find out more.

Like this month’s Abstract conference that created an intersection between the design communities of New York and Portland, the Broderson’s in October will do the same for advertising. But whereas the designers convened in the very nice but clan sized Hannaford Hall at USM, the ad tribe will take over the 2,500 seat State Theatre. In honor of Dylan Thomas, sullenness will not be banished, drinks will be served!

The ABSTRACT Maine 2011 conference this Friday is a great opportunity for designers and publishers of all kinds to come to Portland and get a glimpse of the future of the presentation of content from six creative directors on the forefront of what was, until recently, considered the magazine business in New York. Magazines are morphing into multi-channel, multi-screen streams of branded content, but they still are about telling stories. So consider Abstract to be a kind of 21st century Chautauqua: story-tellers telling stories about how to tell stories. Of course, at LiveWork Portland, we try to tell the story about how smart, independently-minded creative people find Portland to be the perfect place to develop their talents and enjoy their lives. We didn’t really think that Fast Company creative director Florian Bachleda was thinking of relocating to Portland, but we thought we would ask anyway…

1) The emphasis of the ABSTRACT conference seems to be about the ways that technology has transformed the presentation of media. Where on the tech spectrum do you fall personally, from card-carrying Luddite to bleeding edge geek?
I’ve sometimes been a card carrying Luddite who finally tasted geekdom and now I can’t get enough of it. The different options we now have as story-tellers is intoxicating.

2) With all of the additional demands and opportunities that multi-channel publishing presents, do you still consider yourself a designer, or have you become something more hybrid and hyphenated?
I still consider myself a designer, it’s just that the job description for being a designer in 2011 and beyond has radically changed. I see this in my colleagues also: Arem Duplessis at the the NY Sunday Times Magazine has been directing his digital and motion graphics team. Dirk Barnett at Newsweek is about to tackle that side of his new gig. Luke Hayman at Pentagram is always out in front with things like this.

3) What are the specific skills that this new world of media requires, have you been able to develop all of those skills yourself, and if not, has your process become more collaborative?
I have not been able to develop as many of those skills as I’d like, but you realize (again) that as long as you have a team of people with those skills, your job as the creative director is to direct. Understanding what everyone does, what’s possible, and being able to give direction is the key, not so much mastering those skill sets yourself. In a perfect world, I would have the time to do that. But even if I did, there’s no way I’m going to be as good as my team that have those specific skill sets. We’ve all heard this before: You’re the conductor and you write the music, but you need a great orchestra to play the individual instruments.

4) Based on your own experiences in the magazine publishing world of New York, what kinds of businesses, design studios, creative communities, etc. will best be able to take advantage of the kinds of cross-platform workflow solutions that you will discuss at the conference?
Any type of company or community that is willing to embrace the future and not always attach a P&L to it. Especially organizations with leaders that are willing to champion new technology. From our crew, you see Scott Dadich at Conde Nast and Gael Towey at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia taking the lead on this within their companies, and the way they’ve been able to move mountains is so impressive. At Fast Company, we’re pushing forward with a tablet app for our annual 100 Most Creative People package because we think it will be a value to our readers, not because it will be some huge money-maker. We’re a magazine about progress and innovation, and there’s never a line item for that.

5) And this is for our local angle: To the extent that technology allows you to move your life and work to another city, which ones would you consider? What are the most important factors for you about the geographic location of where you live and work? And if you didn’t answer Portland, Maine, what factors (other than moving it to Brooklyn!) would make you consider relocating here?
Sorry, it might be impossible for me to leave New York right now. My cat loves it here too much…

Two Fat Cats Bakery sign photo from PeaceLoveandFood blog

Of all the world-class creative directors alighting on Portland, Maine this Friday for the Abstract: The Future of Design in Media Conference, Gael Towey is perhaps in the best position to “get” Portland. Towey has been the Creative Director for Martha Stewart’s magazines and other omnimedias for the past 20 years. Together, Martha and Gael have made the well-crafted and well-curated life knowable and accessible to a generation of Americans that was losing touch with the basic competencies of their own lifestyles. From heirloom apples to the perfect turkey, Martha Stewart Living has shown and told us what to buy—and more importantly—what to do with what we buy.

So it was serendipity last week, as I was considering how to introduce Gael Towey to Portland, that designer Brook Delorme, of Brook There on Wharf Street, posted a piece on her blog entitled “Artisanal Living.” If Martha Stewart turned the artistry of everyday life into an aspirational pastime, many of us in Portland have turned it into a full-time occupation. Brook begins, ”I understand, in theory, the way to really make money … invent something and then remove your personal body, self and time from the process of building and distribution.” But that, of course, is not what Brook is doing in her design business at all, she’s making things, herself, by hand. “The artisanal approach is limited—by working hours in the day,” she continues. “Artisanal manufacturing; whether it’s bread or pottery or handmade clothing— isn’t very scalable.”

And there you have it, Martha Stewart in New York creating content (at scale) about the joys of doing things by hand and recognizing things well done, and Portland artisans filling the hours of their days practicing, in a sense, what Martha is preaching. There is a bit of a fret underlying all of the emphasis on craft in Portland—are we too artisanal for our own good? But in Portland, which was Brooklyn before Brooklyn was Brooklyn, it is not just the art of the hand-made garment or the perfect baguette that consumes us, but also the art of the community. When Brook muses, ”So, were I to desire to grow this business, I’d need to find someone else to at least do some of the stuff I like doing, and I’d have to spend more time doing things I dislike,” we can echo as well that people live in Portland so they can spend more of their time doing the things they like and less time doing things they dislike. Finally, Brook asks, “Can I reframe this somehow? what am I missing?”

This is the question that Portland is asking and to a certain extent, what the Abstract Conference is answering. The conference grows out of the incredibly dense media community in New York that has spent the last few years battling its own extinction from the pressures of what in the ’90s was quaintly called “new media.” But the strength of the community was such that, with the help of technology, they have led the “old media” print publishing companies into the new world of branded apps, social media and mobile content. These creative directors have all “reframed” their skills and talents in the context of multi-platform publishing. So the promise of the conference to participants is a concentrated glimpse of the way forward for designers and publishers, but in a more concrete sense it is about how a critical mass of talent in one place leads to innovation and the growth of new businesses.

Portland aspires to be such a community of creative innovators, and I think many of us have a sense that we are approaching a tipping point beyond which we will spontaneously begin to emit new products and businesses like strange quarks in a particle accelerator. That is the spirit behind LiveWork Portland and our new networking group 2 Degrees Portland. As Brook Delorme wrote in a post we commented on last year, we think more competition from more creatives will be better for everyone’s business. So we’re trying to connect the dots for people interested in relocating here by hooking them up with volunteers here who can help them find their place in Portland.

I asked all of the Abstract panelists “To the extent that technology allows you to move your life and work to another city, which ones would you consider? And if you didn’t answer Portland, Maine, what factors (other than moving it to Brooklyn!) would make you consider relocating here?” Not surprisingly, Gael replied, “I can’t move to Portland because my husband and kids are in NYC, and I love it too much. However, I am excited to visit Portland. I think technology allows us to travel more and live in other cities besides NY.” So we know that she is not coming to Portland on Friday to scout the location, BUT IF she were, this is the kind of thing that 2 Degrees Portland would do for her:

[If the English language had a subjunctive tense with a connotation that means AS IF, we would switch to that at this point in the post!]

2 Degrees Portland coordinator Laura Burden would receive an email from Gael through the 2 Degrees website or Facebook page. Since she would have just read the “Artisanal Living” post, Brook would immediately spring to mind as a good “connector” for Gael. [To become a connector for 2 Degrees Portland, just fill out this short form.] Laura would email Brook and ask her if she would be willing to talk to Gael on the phone or meet with her on her next trip to Portland. Brook would say, ”Sounds like fun! and thank you for thinking of me ” Perhaps Brook would invite Gael to her workshop on Wharf Street and tell her about starting a lifestyle brand in Portland. Then maybe they would walk over to Custom House Wharf for a hands-on stitching demonstration at Sea Bags and then to 2 Note Perfumery on Moulton Street to pick out a gift for Martha. in parting, Brook would wish her luck, ask her to keep in touch and pass on a list of places she thinks Gael would enjoy:

a short list in portland!

my favorites:
fore street <—favorite nice restaurant because it’s relaxed
boda <—-only thai food in portland that’s actually like food in thailand
rosemont market <—they make the best hummous in portland, & competitively price their excellent quality produce
micucci’s <—-luna bread-  the best bread in portland
arabica, bard, hilltop  <—I can’t take sides, I love them all, but almost every day I get a latte from arabica.
quimby colony <—Roxanne Quimby’s exciting and emerging artist colony, with a focus on design
bar lola <—Our artisanal version of “Everyday Food”

granted, most of my list is food-related…but that’s what portland’s about, right?

Switching out of the subjunctive, Gael, even if you’re not going to HQ your own multimedia empire here, we hope you enjoy Portland. If you have the time, Brook would be happy to meet you, Sea Bags really would make a photogenic how-to story for the iPad, 2 Note is great for gifts and the food really is as good as everyone says.

Spring in Maine is a fleeting pleasure. Wedged as it so often is between a just too long winter and an always spectacular summer. A blush of cherry blossoms on Brackett Street near Maine Medical Center this week reminded me to enjoy what I find today because it surely will be different tomorrow. Like the mothers of young children we see tender blossoms yield quickly to riotous foliage. We are grateful to begin again…and again.

We have talked before on this blog about how competition and criticism are the hallmarks of truly creative communities. Past a certain threshold, it’s not enough to merely give or withhold  coverage. To elevate a scene and improve everyone’s game you need critical discourse. So after going to last week’s opening of the 2011 Portland Biennial, and being favorably impressed with many pieces and with the overall quality of the show, I waited to see if anything challenging would emerge from the local press.

This week’s cover of the Portland Phoenix caught my eye, but not for the right reasons. The image of a heavily tattooed man with the headline “Art for the 21st Century,” seemed like a cliché: are tattoos really a prerequisite to be a contemporary artist? As it turns out the man in the photo is indeed an artist, but not one who is in the show—the photograph of him, by Michael Penny, is in the show. That quibble aside, the walk-through review by Phoenix art critics Annie Larmon and Nicholas Schroeder is mostly right on. The approach is conversational and a bit scattered, as if you were walking through the exhibit with a couple of friends who enjoy talking about art. For the most part, the two are in agreement about which pieces are truly contemporary and which, being more traditional, are “a lateral step at best.”

There are certainly some artists who are pushing the boundaries of the art experience: Alisha Gould’s ceramic wall sculpture, “Ejecta,” makes a large (arguably explosive) effect with a self-same collection of exquisitely delicate objects; Philip Brou‘s “Black Box,” asks us to imagine the mundane details of the night spent in a South Portland motel on September 10, 2001, by two of the 9/11 hijackers; Deborah Wing-Sproul‘s hour-long video, “Tidal Culture, Part III, Greenland,” rewards the viewer’s sustained engagement with subtle shifts in state of mind; Alicia Eggert’s interactive kinetic sculpture “Wonder,” reminds us of how our actions influence what we are looking at, and by extension, how simple natural systems respond to their environments. Larmon and Schroeder liked these pieces as well and went on to contrast these and other works they liked with those they consider to offer “little more than a shopworn notion of beauty.”

There’s a conceptual distinction here that is certainly part of the Portland Biennial’s challenge: is this a contemporary survey of art made by artists who work (or have worked) in Maine, or is it a survey of contemporary art by Maine artists? The placement of the word contemporary is critical, and I think the Portland Museum of Art has succeeded at getting a lot of first-rate contemporary work into a show that also represents the full range of art making in Maine. Many traditional art enthusiasts make the pilgrimage to the PMA to see their Winslow Homers, so the museum does have an obligation to provide for that audience as well. It is always important to realize that work considered traditional now was contemporary in its time, and that in Homer’s time, painting was the best way to capture the landscape that compelled him. If he were working today he might choose HD video instead.

So, whichever camp you are in, the PMA wants to make sure that they provide context and access to the artists and their thinking that can help you enjoy what you are already attracted to and discover some things you might otherwise overlook. The museum has scheduled a series of “Meet the Artist” talks on three consecutive Saturdays, April 9, 16 and 23. They also have a “cellphone audio tour” that you can access in the galleries to hear the artists describe the work you are looking at. There is also a beautifully designed (and very reasonably priced) catalog with statements from and photos of each artist, so if you see one of your favorite artists at a café or on First Friday, you’ll recognize them and have something to talk about.

Photo by Corey Templeton

Portlanders cultivate authenticity in everything we do. But as anyone in the fashion or accessories business knows, as soon as you create something really new, low-cost knockoffs begin showing up in the mall. Sea Bags makes one of a kind tote bags from upcycled sail cloth, “born of the sea,” as they like to say and stitched right on Custom House Wharf in Portland, Maine. They have been written up in the New Yorker and collaborated on a line of bags with Angela Adams for J. Crew. Their business has been growing at a healthy clip and they seem to have found their (sea) legs. But how to differentiate their genuine, unique article from all the imitators? This was the challenge they brought to Kemp Goldberg Partners—the other big ad agency in Portland. In a visually rich and conceptually economical way, Kemp Goldberg’s print campaign for Sea Bags located their creation story in the middle of the open ocean, most strikingly off the coast of Greenland, above. The copy merely delivers the place and the time of the image and the messages “Every Sea Bag has a story,” and, “Continue the Journey.” The campaign works because the target audience is nautically identified and feels, in the ads, the ancestral pull of the sea. Kemp Goldberg are also “developing a fully integrated campaign based on the unique brand positioning and story to include a QR code/video for the bag tag, a cause marketing campaign to reinforce and communicate the values that are central to the company, as well as other social media and interactive tactics.” Sounds like a plan. Made in Portland, marketed in Portland, sold to discerning customers everywhere.

The opening of Base Camp Gallery last week in Portland was as much about the fact of a new alternative art space as it was about the work that was shown. Everybody there was clearly having a good time and it seemed to me that the real art at play here was social. This is not to diminish the work, much of which could easily be hanging in any number of downtown galleries, but rather to elevate place-making to its rightful place. The place in question is a large warehouse, once used for distributing beer, and now the auxiliary space of a couple of well-established Portland entrepreneurs, a machine shop and an interesting smattering of younger creatives. The entry way looked like an art installation at Documenta in Kassel, Germany, with a lineup of Mercedes and modern furniture mashed up against a sound system and bar (another way of distributing beer). The autos turn out to be part of a bio-diesel conversion project, but no matter, they were fun to look at and added to the cocktail chatter. The overarching theme of the space and the crowd was, in fact, conversational. The artworks to each other, the art to the space, the implicit conversations between the different tenants of the warehouse, and of course, the sizable crowd that came to see what it was all about.

Another kind of conversation will be happening on Tuesday, April 5th. The Maine Center for Creativity will be hosting “From Imagination to Innovation: Maine Participates in Lincoln Center Institute’s Imag’nation Conversation.” This is one of fifty such events that the Lincoln Center Institute has been holding in every state that will culminate in an Imagination Summit in New York this coming July. These conversations are designed to get people talking about “how imagination is a prerequisite for success in the 21st-century global economy [and how] now more than ever, we must teach imagination in our schools and nurture it in our communities.” The keynote speaker for the Maine conversation will be Rockland artist Eric Hopkins, joined by Daniel Bouthot, Habib Dagher, Carol Farrell, Aaron Frederick, Andy Graham and Karen Montanaro, moderated by Patsy Wiggins. The event goes from 4 to 8pm, at Hannaford Hall at the Abromson Center on the USM Portland campus ($20 to attend; $5 for USM students; RSVP is required).

There has been a lot of discussion during the past months (and particularly in the past weeks) about the role of public art in Portland and in the State of Maine in general. The Portland Museum of Art will be holding a free public forum: “Whose Art is It?” on Friday, April 8 from 12-1:30 pm. The discussion will use the removal of the The Maine Labor Mural Cycle in Augusta as a springboard to address the status of public ownership of public art. “Participants will include: Mark Bessire, Director of the Portland Museum of Art; Sharon Corwin, Director and Chief Curator of the Colby College Museum of Art; Christina Bechstein, Sculpture Professor and Director of Public Engagement at Maine College of Art; and Chris O’Neil, Government Relations Consultant for the Portland Community Chamber. Invitations were extended to Governor Paul LePage, who is unable to attend and to artist Judy Taylor [who painted the mural cycle], who has respectfully declined.”

Last fall, proposals for benches for the new Bayside Trail were unveiled to the public to no great acclaim: “Art should be something you feel passion for,” said committee Chairman Jack Soley. “At the end of the day, we felt most of the entries were simply too pedestrian, and we’re not looking for that. We could buy benches from a catalog if that’s what we were looking for.” From what I saw of the proposals, some of them were quite well crafted and others too self-consciously “artistic.” But, to return to the idea we started this post out with, the relevant “creativity” here is not personally expressive, but social. One of the most successful comparable projects in recent years has been the High Line in Manhattan’s Chelsea district. The seating is indeed functional, but beautifully designed. Most importantly, people use it! The High Line offers many places for people to stop and relax and socialize. The seating has helped to make the space into a place. With luck, this is what the Public Art Committee had in mind when they decided to reissue the challenge: “To Artists, Designers, Landscape Architects, Architects and other interested parties: The Public Art Committee of Portland, Maine has issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) from artists and designers, or teams of artists and designers, to create functional art in the form of seating along the new Bayside Trail in Portland. The RFQ is available for download on the Portland Planning and Urban Development Department web site. The deadline for submission of a qualifications packet is 3:00 p.m., Thursday, April 28th, 2011.” The Public Art Committee also requests that you please forward this post along to other artists or designers who might be interested in submitting qualifications for this project.

Making places for creativity to happen is just as important as the tangible products of creativity itself. The creation of new places like Base Camp and the Bayside Trail adds to the collective happiness that we feel in Portland.